I'm afraid I don't remember any tree thing from the comic... you aren't talking about

the giant squid Ozymandias created, are you?

Yes. It's not a tree, obviously, but it always looked plant-like to me, like some massive carnivorous plant. Don't like it much, conceptually.

Fri Jan 27, 2017 7:29 am

Stu

Re: Recently Seen

Beau wrote:

Yes. It's not a tree, obviously, but it always looked plant-like to me, like some massive carnivorous plant. Don't like it much, conceptually.

Me neither, plus, I think I remember reading that it sent out some sort of vague psychic shockwave to give people nightmares worldwide and make them fear even more. It's just a really weird, silly idea both visually and conceptually, and the one thing I can remember the movie doing better than the comic, definitely.

Perfect example of something from movies making the transition to TV. Fargo. I would dare say that the 2 seasons trump the movie.

I don't have enough praise for Dunst. She manages the right balance of terrifying and pitiful.

Sat Jan 28, 2017 12:51 am

Ace

Re: Recently Seen

Joss Whedon wrote:

I don't have enough praise for Dunst. She manages the right balance of terrifying and pitiful.

She got robbed at the Emmys and Globes. Although I havent seen People vs OJ Simpson to know if her performance was better than Sara Paulson's.

Sat Jan 28, 2017 3:17 am

Stu

The Road Warrior (Miller, '81)

In the roar of an engine, Max lost everything, and became a shell of a man. A man, who wandered out into the wasteland, and in this blighted place... learned to live again.

Mad Max was always a series I was aware of growing up, but never one I had much experience with firsthand; I watched the original movie about thirteen years ago, and remember being pretty bored by it at the time, so I just never got interested in seeing the rest of the movies after that. However, having enjoyed Fury Road for the first time last year, and being aware of the high praise for the 2nd film, I decided it was finally time to check out The Road Warrior, and I definitely did not regret the decision; a colorfully intense, high octane post-apocalyptic actioner, TRW is a great time, and well deserving of its status as a classic of early 80's Action.

Maestro Of Max George Miller achieves this by constantly including little details that color in the Aussie-flavored world of the film, as the costumers, props people, and actors give their all to bring its characters to larger-than-life, er, life , with the animalistic, boomerang-throwing "Feral Child", Bruce Spence's eccentric, rattlesnake-loving gyro captain, and of course, the barbaric, S&M-clad gang of maruders, lead by Vernon Wells's wide eyed, war crazy "Wez", and the muscle bound, Jason Vorhees-mask wearing leader Lord Humongous, all adding a ton of personality to the film, and that's barely scratching the surface of the crazy cast in this movie. And, while one could argue some of the performances here are a bit too over the top, I find them rather apt for the exaggerated, comic book-ish future of the world, and enjoy the zeal with which certain actors chew the scenery (what little scenery remains in "The Wasteland", that is). Additionally, there's a lot of small happenings that help to spice the film up further, and make you forget about the admittedly paper-thin plot; I mean, how can you not find the Lord Humongus "spokesman" losing his fingers when he tries to catch that metal boomerang morbidly hilarious? I sure as hell know I did. The crazy stuff comes so fast and heavy that you'd need to pause this movie every frame just to catch it all (and even then, you're gonna miss something), but doing so would only slow down the no-nonsense pacing that drives TRW so relentlessly forward.

The supporting characters serve as a welcome contrast to Mel Gibson's Max, who, after violently losing his family in the first film and going "mad" at the end, now wanders The Wasteland endlessly, only interested in surviving the gangs of roving thugs, and scavenging for what little "guzzoline" he can scrape up, his only remaining sentimental connection lying with his faithful, scrawny little guard dog (who he imaginatively names "Dog"). You could say he's a spin on the classic, strong, silent hero type we've seen so often, but he really isn't all that, er, heroic during Warrior, as he makes zero attempt to rescue a woman he sees being sexually assaulted (and displays almost no emotion as he watches), only comes to the aid of the group of under-siege settlers because of the all-you-can-guzzle gas deal they offer him, tries to abandon them to a certain doom as soon as he can, and refuses to respond to any hero worship they direct at him. However, I find Max's cold, self-centered pragmatism to be a refreshingly honest direction for a lead protagonist, and his character fits in perfectly with both Miller's savage cinematic world, and as a well-motivated continuation of the arc that began in the original film. And, conversely, Max's emotional distancing ends up rendering the moments where shows the barest hints of humanity, like his silent bonding with the Feral Child over the gift of a music box, all the more impactful for their rareness within the film.

Finally, the action within The Road Warrior excels in a gritty, old-school DIY fashion, with every stunt being executed without the sort of CGI trickery that, over the last few decades, has all too often been used as an unnecessary crutch for blockbusters. No, every action scene here was, in one way or another, pulled off for real, as the stuntmen go above and beyond the call of duty, putting life and limb at severe risk in order to fully achieve Miller's vision of violence. It looks like almost every stunt here came periously close to injuring someone (and indeed, some very serious injuries did occur), and the film's wreckless stunts, sheer momentum, and fetishization of vehicular mayhem all work together to create a thrilling rush within the audience. In the aftermath of TRW's unleashing, what was almost an entire subgenre of B-movies from all around the world tried to rip off its particular style, but all of them ended up being left far behind in The Road Warrior's post-apocalyptic dust. Don't miss it.

Maybe it's because the theme of missed opportunity is really resonating with me lately, but I liked T2 Trainspotting quite a bit. It's definitely an interesting sequel, even if it doesn't all land.

Also, Jonny Lee Miller and Ewen Bremner are fucking terrific in this.

Mon Jan 30, 2017 5:26 am

Beau

Re: Recently Seen

The persistent La La Land backslash is so annoying I'm almost ready to declare it a masterpiece, although I don't think it is.

Much of the criticism seems to stem from the idea that the movie means to emulate the classic musicals and that, you know, Ryan Gosling's no Gene Kelly and Emma Stone's no Judy Garland, which, you know, no shit. I don't know why it's occurred to so few critics that the movie's failure to measure up to the past might actually be its most interesting feature and not something to snobbishly deride while flashing your cinephile credentials.

For the most part, I felt that this was what you want to see in a sequel; a bigger, better experience than the (slightly) underwhelming original, John Wick 2 builds upon the base established by its predecessor and runs with it, upping the ante with a larger, more international globetrotting scale to the story, which does a good job of following up the fallout from the first while also planting the seeds for a sequel that the film itself pretty much admits is inevitable, as well as giving us more tantilizing glimpses of the colorful underworld created in the first film, and of course, more ACTION, not just in terms of the quantity of carnage, but the sheer brutality of it as well, as things get a lot down and dirtier here, with a bigger emphasis on gore, and more visceral and intimate hand-to-hand bloodletting.

The only real complaint I had with it was with the sometimes uneven pacing, which fluctuated between slightly repetitive scenes of action and somewhat overlong scenes of, er, non-action, as if the (now solo-directing) Chad Stahelski was trying to justify the gratituity of the carnage by unnecessarily stretching out the quieter moments of dialogue and plot setup inbetween. That being said, the movie is still more confidently executed than the original, with a stronger sense of personality, which goes a ways toward pulling us through the occasional lull, with more badass/eccentric supporting characters, such as Common as a vengeful fellow assassin gunning for Wick, Ruby Rose as an icy, deaf hitwoman who exclusively communicates through sign language (giving the film more excuses to squeeze in even more comic book-style subtitles), and fellow Matrix alumni Lawrence Fishburne reuniting with Keanu in the role of a homeless assassin king who has an entire network of "beggers" working for him throughout NYC.

And, while one could criticize the film's emphasis on faceless, disposable baddies that attack the title character in sometimes endless, predictable waves, or John's repeated usage of a couple of basic moves to dispatch most of them, which makes him seem like a live-action video game character, there's enough visual variety, gallows humor, and memorable, punctuating (and puncturing) moments throughout to keep the movie from becoming too tiresome at any point. Besides, the gratitiousness is kind of the whole point of the film; like the original, John Wick 2 is sheer action movie porn, with no greater purpose to exist but to serve as a pure love letter to the genre as a whole, which it succeeds in doing very enjoyably. At one point, John says "You wanted me back... I'm back!", and all I could think in response was "Yes we did, Mr. Wick, and yes, you most certainly are".

I watched Aliens again the other night, in memory of the late Billy Paxton. That movie gets better every time I see it.

Wed Mar 01, 2017 7:06 am

Ace

Re: Recently Seen

Regular or Special edition. Unless they call it the Directors Cut or whatever.

Wed Mar 01, 2017 8:39 am

Von Samuel

Re: Recently Seen

Ace wrote:

Regular or Special edition. Unless they call it the Directors Cut or whatever.

Theatrical

Wed Mar 01, 2017 8:44 am

Beau

Re: Recently Seen

Still my preferred version, for sure.

Wed Mar 01, 2017 9:06 am

Stu

Re: Recently Seen

Beau wrote:

Still my preferred version, for sure.

The theatrical edition would pretty much 100% be my favorite version as well, if they had just included all of the material about

Ripley's daughter, which I've always felt really humanized her character further in an essential way. Just include all of that and leave out the truly unnecessary scenes, like the sequence on Hadley's Hope/LV-426 before everything goes to hell, and that would pretty much be a perfect cut of Aliens.

It's just that the narrative payoff - her maternal feelings for Newt, the sense that she's lost everyone she ever knew by being frozen in deep space for so long, etc. - are all things you can infer from her actions during the film. You don't really need the backstory to pick up on certain things.

Wed Mar 01, 2017 10:14 am

Stu

Re: Recently Seen

Beau wrote:

All that stuff adds a nice touch, for sure.

It's just that the narrative payoff - her maternal feelings for Newt, the sense that she's lost everyone she ever knew by being frozen in deep space for so long, etc. - are all things you can infer from her actions during the film. You don't really need the backstory to pick up on certain things.

It can all be inferred, yeah, it's just that I feel it isn't as satisfying to do so when it comes to that aspect of Aliens. Sometimes, less is more, but this is one of those cases where I feel that more is more, where I sympathize with Ripley more because I know more about her background. I mean, the scene where she learns that

Amy died 2 years before she returned, that she left her no grandchildren, and that Ripley promised her that she'd be home in time for her 11th birthday, never fails to break my heart a little bit, y'know?

For the first two acts of Get Out, first-time writer/director Jordan Peele (best known for the Comedy Central skit show Key & Peele) shows a decent amount of skill in creating a generally creepy, unsettling atmosphere, and instilling within us a genuine feeling of unease, as he sets up the story of Chris, a young black photographer meeting his white girlfriend's parents for the first time, as he spends a weekend at their large, seemingly idyllic suburban home. Some awkward, possibly unintentional racial tension happens between Chris, the family, and their stuffy, upper-class neighbors (almost all white themselves, of course), but nothing really out-and-out threatening happens during this part of the film, and save for the occasionally disconcerting moment, you could almost fool yourself into thinking that Get Out is basically just a 2017 remake of Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?.

That is, except for the continually odd behavior of all the other black people in the neighborhood, including Walter, the landscaper, Georgina, the family housekeeper, and Logan, a neighbor married to a white woman much, much older than himself, as all of them either act nothing like "black people", or just nothing like people, period. The two domestic servants behave like, well, a white person's idea of how a black servant should act, unfailingly chipper and docile towards everyone else, but in a way that's incredibly stiff and unnatural at the same time, as if there's something just underneath their surface just screaming to get out, which hints at a 3rd act twist that I genuinely didn't see coming at all whatsoever (hint: it's not the twist you guess at first, believe me).

Which brings me to the bonkers final act of the film, which is gory, over-the-top, B-Horror fun, and helps to retroactively justify everything that happened before it. Don't get me wrong, as, like I wrote earlier, Peele does do a pretty good job with the surprisingly subdued beginning and middle of the film, which, for basic story reasons, just wouldn't have worked in a more in-your-face style (an early jump scare involving an animal is more Peele awaringly mocking the tendency of Horror hacks to put such unnecessary scares in their films, rather than him being such a hack himself). That being said, even though the overall film is less than 2 hours, the pacing early on is still a bit too slow at times, with a reliance on a somewhat vague atmosphere of unease, with few concrete story developments happening, all of which are elements that could've contributed to a disappointing film if the finale didn't end up delivering on the overall potential of the experience.

However, like I said, the 3rd act of the film does end up delivering, throwing us a relatively novel story curveball that makes us reassess everything we've seen up to that point, while simultaneously balancing that out with the bloody, shocking jolts we've been waiting for, but in a way that prevents the movie from becoming mindless schlock, as the visceral horrors are happening side-by-side onscreen at the same time as the intriguing new story details are developing, sharing space with them and adding a whole new dimension to the overall experience. In the end, Get Out isn't a perfect film, as it obviously took a while to start clicking with me, and if you wanna nitpick, a certain comedy relief supporting character sticks out like he's a sore thumb left over from an unaired sketch on Peele's old show, but it's ultimately pretty skilled, scary material, and am now wondering who else in the TV skits world could possibly break out into Horror films; someone from SNL, start working on a ghost movie, ASAP!

A lot must have been written in this thread about Kubo and the Two Strings already. But I didn't go back to search it up and read it.

I just got through the film after falling asleep twice trying to watch it when I was too tired on earlier nights. And now that I've seen it, my major note about the film is simply this:

The film somehow makes magic on screen seem magical in a way I haven't experienced since I was knee high to a Samurai and watching Disney films.

I love Laika Productions. I do I do I do.

Gonna order the Blu as soon as it's cheap enough.

EDIT: It was cheap enough, and I'll have it on the 4th of March.

_________________Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

It's just that the narrative payoff - her maternal feelings for Newt, the sense that she's lost everyone she ever knew by being frozen in deep space for so long, etc. - are all things you can infer from her actions during the film. You don't really need the backstory to pick up on certain things.

I agree, and maybe it's because I am a little more in tune for stuff like this right now, but I noticed a lot of social commentary I previously hadn't noticed before. Basically America, in Aliens, is a capitalist war mongering, entity, still built on a class system, while also exploring space. It's so absurd it borders on satire.

Sat Mar 04, 2017 6:51 am

Stu

Logan (Mangold, '17)

Nature made me a freak. Man made me a weapon. And God made it last too long.

Logan may seem like an oddly minimalist, unusual title for what is (supposedly) Hugh Jackman's final hurrah playing what has become the most iconic of onscreen X-Men, Wolverine, but when you actually see this, hopefully you'll understand why they simply titled it after the character's real name, and have no more qualms with it than I did. After all, this is a very unusual, minimalist X-Men film itself, drawing a mythic strength not only from Jackman's long-running portrayal of the character onscreen, but also from the more than 40-year legacy of Wolverine in the comics (in one particularly clever, self-aware twist), while also simultaneously humanizing him more than we've ever seen him before, stripping the Wolverine down to his bare, adamantium-bonded bones.

When we first see Logan in Logan, he's barely scraping together a living as an on-call limousine driver in Texas (driving a leased-out limo, to boot), fueled more by constant alcohol than rage, and noticeably older, his legendary regenerative healing working much slower than ever before, as he's barely able to fend off a group of thugs trying to steal his hubcaps. He chauffeurs around rich assholes, boorish fratboys, and drunken bachelorettes to and fro for a living, barely able to afford the black market meds he desperately needs to smuggle into Mexico, where he hopes to keep an increasingly senile and demented Charles Xavier from destroying mankind in a devastatingly final psychic wave, as he saves every penny he earns in the vain hope of purchasing a yacht someday so he and "Professor X" may live out the rest of their days in some ridiculous, idyllic existence on the sea.

So yeah, he is definitely not the beclawed badass we saw stylishly carve off a piece of the Statue Of Liberty's crown all those years ago; he is a broken "Wolverine" here, struggling to survive in a near future where mutants have mysteriously become nearly extinct. However, all of that changes when he runs across a young girl with powers strikingly similar to his own, a girl Logan is (extremely reluctantly) drawn into protecting from a ominous multinational corporation and its army of assassins, as the film takes us on a truly epic journey all the way from the unforgiving deserts of Mexico to the snowy mountains of Canada, giving Logan something real to live for for the first time in a very, very long time.

But, despite this epic scope and its over 2-hour runtime, Logan derives most of its strength from how down-to-Earth and just plain human it really is, despite being about mutants. Although it takes place over a decade into the future, there are no absurd, obscenely high-tech facilities or fancy pants "schools for the gifted" in sight here, rather, the settings of its multinational journey are gas stations, quaint farm houses, and the tiny, one horse towns of Middle America; in other words, this is X-Men in the real world, for real. But, more importantly than that, Logan always has a devastatingly intimate and personal focus on its characters, showing a sense of genuine pathos and emotional maturity that, is not only rare to see in a superhero film, but is just rare to see in film, period. The characters of Logan aren't the kind of living action figures you might have seen elsewhere, but are real, live, actual people, with very real pains and emotions, and, as they suffer and hope onscreen, so too did I, suffering and hoping right alongside them. This is probably the best X-Men movie to date, possibly ever, even, and for a eulogy for everyone's favorite Canadian rodent, I don't think you could've expected a better one than you get in Logan. Go see it, right fucking now.

So, Logan is fantastic. It's the first Marvel movie to really stick with me after seeing it. The rest I've forgotten about the moment I left the theater.

Mon Mar 06, 2017 3:32 am

Stu

Re: Recently Seen

Von Samuel wrote:

So, Logan is fantastic. It's the first Marvel movie to really stick with me after seeing it. The rest I've forgotten about the moment I left the theater.

I always loved SpiderMan 2, and have enjoyed some of the other Marvel movies (and not enjoyed a couple of them that were supposed to be good, to be honest), but Logan is better than almost every other Marvel movie out there... heck, it's better than most superhero movies, period. Just so much more intimate and emotional than so many of them are, y'know?

I always loved SpiderMan 2, and have enjoyed some of the other Marvel movies (and not enjoyed a couple of them that were supposed to be good, to be honest), but Logan is better than almost every other Marvel movie out there... heck, it's better than most superhero movies, period. Just so much more intimate and emotional than so many of them are, y'know?

It's a breath of fresh air to have a superhero movie with heart and emotion, that isn't afraid to explore human frailty and belonging. It's not a perfect film, but, I much prefer an effort like Logan to the general superhero/blockbuster films.

It goes back to what I found so disappointing about Rogue One which felt like everything that could have possibly endeared the audience to the characters was cut out in favor of fan service and marketable moments.

Tue Mar 07, 2017 6:29 am

Joss Whedon

Re: Recently Seen

Is anyone planning on watching Feud? It's definitely an interesting show on many levels, while Lange and Sarandon aren't legends, their careers do mirror the treatment Crawford and Davis received from Hollywood once they reached a certain age.

Good review, Stu. I loved Logan and it's a damn shame it took this long to get an R rated, truly badass Wolverine movie.

Indeed; it shows just how you don't need a big, climatic battle for the fate of the planet, or have a tone or rating that's generally "fun for the whole family" to make a good superhero movie; you can make it gory, downbeat, and small-scale/personal, and have a great addition to the genre that way. A lot more comic book movies should follow its lead now, I think.

Yeah, although it's worth noting that Logan could be a bit bolder and sadder because it's such an established character - and, more, such an established actor playing that character. So there's a lot of built up emotional baggage. Audiences were collectively ready for this movie.

Thu Mar 23, 2017 9:10 am

Ace

Re: Recently Seen

He's been IN EVERY X-MEN related movie (Deadpool aside) so yeah it was time.

Thu Mar 23, 2017 10:52 am

Joss Whedon

Re: Recently Seen

Beau wrote:

Yeah, although it's worth noting that Logan could be a bit bolder and sadder because it's such an established character - and, more, such an established actor playing that character. So there's a lot of built up emotional baggage. Audiences were collectively ready for this movie.

Somewhere between Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas and Jack Nicholson in Ironweed

Thu Mar 23, 2017 2:26 pm

Stu

Re: In Cold Blood (Brooks, '67)

I thought Mr. Clutter was a very nice gentleman... I thought so right up to the time I cut his throat.

Despite how influential Truman Capote's "non-fiction novel" In Cold Blood was considered at its release (a book which, to be perfectly honest, I still haven't read), the film adaptation of the same name is likely just as groundbreaking within its own medium, if not more so. After all, released in 1967, it played side-by-side in theaters with such watersheds as Bonnie & Clyde and The Graduate, films which helped pushed the envelopes on cinematic portrayals of sex & violence, but most importantly, advanced the cinematic style of Hollywood film by light years, leaving behind a legacy that's still felt in the industry to this day. However, though it was slightly buried in that year's box office compared to those two juggernauts, In Cold Blood is still just as intense and devastating an experience as ever, feeling as though it's barely aged a day since its release 50 years ago, making it rank as my current favorite film from that legendary year, and also just one of the best movies I've seen from any year, period.

The film tells the true story of Dick Hickock & Perry Smith, two ex-convicts who, in November of 1959, robbed and murdered the Clutters, an idyllic family of Kansas farmers, as the title says, "in cold blood". However, while the murders are obviously the film's inciting incident, director Richard Brooks smartly doesn't structure it as such, instead, showing us what happened just before and after that haunted night, revealing to us chilling details in the aftermath, such as a severed phone cord, a bloody shoeprint, the ropes that were utilized to hogtie the Clutters as they waited to be slaughtered. The police investigation of, community reactions to, and journalist reportings on the crime proceed in a parallel track in the film to Dick and Perry's short-lived life on the run, drifting from Mexico to back to Kansas and all points inbetween, before being apprehended for a final time during a gambling trip to Vegas.

All this time on the road gives us ample opportunity to gain deeper insights into both men, delving intimately into both their individual and shared psychologies. Dick, played by a fresh off In The Heat Of The Night Scott Wilson, is casually, arrogantly psychopathic​, but is nonetheless humanized by his dark "friendship" with Perry, and by the way he very humanly cracks under the weight of crimes once he's brought to justice, while Perry himself, agonizingly portrayed by a young Robert Blake, is the product of an unfaithful, alcoholic mother, a physically & emotionally abusive father, and a damaged childhood in general. He's an awkward, pathetic, broken man, both physically and mentally, constantly gulping down aspirin in the hopes of quelling at least one of his many pains, and the tense, uneasy relationship Dick & Perry share throughout the film give In Cold Blood its backbone, as we travel with, and grow to somehow pity both of these confessed killers, reminding us that even the "monsters" among us are still, at the end of the day, fellow human beings as well, no matter how damaged or reprehensible they may seem at first.

The horror of their relationship culminates during the aforementioned night of the murders, which Richard Brooks brilliantly flashes back to for the climax of the film, giving the scene a powerful, personal weight it would've lacked if we hadn't already spent so much time getting to know these characters. The pivotal, long-delayed sequence doesn't disappoint once it finally arrives in all its haunting glory, lasting over 15 minutes, and showing us in agonizing detail the step-by-step process of the robbery, as Dick & Perry intrude upon and restrain the Clutter family, searching in futile vain for a safe full of money that doesn't even turn out to be there. The whole sequence is vividly captured by Conrad Hall's stark, intensely intimate black-&-white cinematography, and plays out in almost complete silence on the soundtrack, as the desolate Kansas wind howls outside like some sort haunted spectre, and, when the murders finally do happen, they are almost as upsetting to witness on film as they would have been in person. Though hardly graphic in its level of violence by today's jaded standards, the sequence is nonetheless captured with an incredible intensity that was not only unseen in the films of that time, but remains rare even today, proving that indeed, sometimes less is much, much more.

This intensity that is delivered during the film's centerpiece scene is reflected throughout the entirety of In Cold Blood, rendering the before and afters of the massacre equally memorable in their vividness, and the film doesn't try and make a real sort of sense or meaning out of the central tragedy, portraying it equally as senseless on film as it really was in life. And, at the finale, as the gallow trapdoor opens and Smith falls to the end of his rope, there are no more answers to give, just the sound of the man's heart slowly stopping, as the film fades away into black one last time.

I finally got around to reading Dune. The book is brilliant, which excited me to revisit the film. I remembered liking the movie the last time I saw it, and after reading the book I assumed the film was widely panned because fans of the book disliked the changes made to the material and/or it didn't resonate with people unfamiliar with the source material.

It turns out I was wrong. The movie is bad. Oddly though, the film doesn't make too many changes to the material like I assumed. There are, of course, characters and moments left out, but that's to be expected, but everything else is pretty true to the book or changed for cinematic effect. The only two things that really bothered me were the portrayal of the Harkonnens and the "weirding way". The Harkonnens are basically cartoon characters in Lynch's film and the weirding way is reduced to a voice activated laser gun. It's a head scratcher.

I finally got around to reading Dune. The book is brilliant, which excited me to revisit the film. I remembered liking the movie the last time I saw it, and after reading the book I assumed the film was widely panned because fans of the book disliked the changes made to the material and/or it didn't resonate with people unfamiliar with the source material.

It turns out I was wrong. The movie is bad. Oddly though, the film doesn't make too many changes to the material like I assumed. There are, of course, characters and moments left out, but that's to be expected, but everything else is pretty true to the book or changed for cinematic effect. The only two things that really bothered me were the portrayal of the Harkonnens and the "weirding way". The Harkonnens are basically cartoon characters in Lynch's film and the weirding way is reduced to a voice activated laser gun. It's a head scratcher.

A case can be made that it's actually too faithful to the book. It tries to cram everything into the limited running time, so important dramatic events are just rushed. Today the film adaptation would get the Lord of the Rings treatment and encompass three or more episodes. A SyFy series tried to do just that a few years ago, but I don't remember being enamored by the result. It's been a while, though. The Lynch film, on the other hand, is fresher in my mind. I did exactly what you did, watched it after reading the novel last year, and had the exact same reaction you had. It's not unfaithful, it's just drab.

A case can be made that it's actually too faithful to the book. It tries to cram everything into the limited running time, so important dramatic events are just rushed. Today the film adaptation would get the Lord of the Rings treatment and encompass three or more episodes. A SyFy series tried to do just that a few years ago, but I don't remember being enamored by the result. It's been a while, though. The Lynch film, on the other hand, is fresher in my mind. I did exactly what you did, watched it after reading the novel last year, and had the exact same reaction you had. It's not unfaithful, it's just drab.

I had heard Lynch's original cut was about 10 hours, which he cut to four hours and the studio cut to two. I think that's why everything has a rushed feel, like your watching the cliff notes version of the film. There is no natural storytelling build up to anything.

I'm about to watch the miniseries now.

Tue Mar 28, 2017 11:59 am

Evil Prevails

Re: Recently Seen

I remember quite enjoying the miniseries when I watched it one weekend ten years ago or so. The climactic fight is pretty great if nothing else.

Tue Mar 28, 2017 12:20 pm

Evil Prevails

Re: Recently Seen

Do you think Gangs of New York would be better if who Leo is wasn't revealed to the audience until the big midpoint moment? Also, holy fuck that second half feels rushed, he unites all the Irish in New York in like a day or two it feels like.

Tue Mar 28, 2017 12:22 pm

Von Samuel

Re: Recently Seen

Evil Prevails wrote:

I remember quite enjoying the miniseries when I watched it one weekend ten years ago or so. The climactic fight is pretty great if nothing else.

I haven't been able to find a decent stream of the mini-series yet, but what I have seen so far, is in stark contrast visually from Lynch's film. I don't like it, but I also understand they weren't working with much of a budget by comparison.

A Canterbury Tale is such a strange, joyful, subtle little thing. What initially strikes one as charming naïveté gradually transfigures into ineffable, bucolic lyricism. It mixes, as stated here, "a detective story, sometimes shot like it was a film noir, a pastoral hymn, a fairytale, a propaganda film, a history lesson," yet the film has little to no plot. It has also inspired some of the loveliest appreciations of a film I've ever read; some are possessed of such awe and reverence that their tones verge on the religious, like interpretations of a mystical text. Peter von Bagh's Criterion essay and this Senses of Cinema essay certainly fit that bill.

This joins my slowly growing list of great works in which nothing or nearly nothing happens, along with Intimate Lighting and Chekhov's Three Sisters.

Edit: This Xan Brooks appreciation, though not as rhapsodic as the others I linked, is touching and wonderfully earnest: "it's a thing of such fragile, broken glory, like some tubercular saint, that I hate the thought of people laughing at it."

_________________Ma`crol´o`gyn. 1. Long and tedious talk without much substance; superfluity of words.

Sun Apr 23, 2017 3:47 pm

Ace

Re: Recently Seen

Hmm I didnt know that Homeward Bound was a remake. Homeward Bound is on Netflix and I was looking up some info on it.

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